Doing It with Office: Online Business Plan Templates

One of the templates you can download from Microsoft Office Online is a framework of a business plan for a start-up company. To locate the template, open the home page for Microsoft Office Online (www.microsoft.com/office), click Templates, and then click Finance And Accounting in the Browse Templates section. On this page, you’ll see a link to the business plan templates.

The start-up business plan template isn’t a fill-in-the-blank form. The document includes a couple of tables that you can use as models for a competitive analysis, but in the main, the template offers guidance by indicating the topics you should include in a business plan and recommending the sort of information you should include about each topic. You need to know the basic features of Microsoft Word to effectively prepare the document, and you need to know all about your business to write an effective plan. If you know more than the basics, you can prepare your business plan that much more easily. You can spend time sharpening the quality of the information you provide about your business rather than formatting the document.